This invention relates to an automated system for consolidating a plurality of individual charges for a consumer, and more particularly, to a system for consolidating a plurality of individual customer charges from a plurality of companies which have different periodic customer billing dates and different payment due dates.
Normally, the customer or consumer receives several if not numerous individual bills or invoices from companies such as utilities during a single month or single time period. However, customer billing dates for several companies and utilities vary. For most utilities, including those which require a meter reading, bills are usually mailed within a day of the individual utility company meter reading. Thus, a consumer or customer's bills are cut, mailed and ultimately due on varying dates during the month or billing cycle.
For many customers, remittance of payment for the charges identified in the bills or invoices is a time consuming and burdensome task. For each remittance payment, the customer must typically fill out the remittance stub, write an individual check to the company or utility for the amount owed, and mail the stub and check to the company or utility in order to meet the payment deadline.
In addition, because monthly or periodic billing cycles for companies and utilities are not synchronized, the task of payment by the customer may not usually be done at a single sitting. Rather, the customer must process and remit payment to the various companies several times during the month or cycle. This of course is an inefficient system for payment remittance.
Moreover, for a customer who pays a large number of company payments during a month or billing cycle, the postage costs to remit payment can add up to a significant dollar amount.
A possible solution to the above problems is to develop a consolidated billing and payment system. This would provide the customer or consumer with a convenient, simple and time and money saving bill payment method. However, the development of such a system is not easily achieved.
Accordingly, it would be desirable to provide a consolidated billing and payment system for charges to a consumer from companies with different periodic billing and payment due dates.